Know what I want? National and state government that works as well as our cars. Seriously. Our vehicles are far more reliable than our elected officials. This wasn’t always the case. I’ve been buying cars, mainly new cars, for a long time.
Not luxury cars, but nice vehicles from subcompacts to small SUVs. I’ve had a number of used cars, too, including a couple old beaters I had before I could afford anything else.
Back in the 1970s and 80s, our governments, especially here in Michigan, were considerably sounder than some of the cars I’ve had. I had a 1978 Volkswagen Rabbit whose engine exploded without warning on the freeway. A Mercury Comet that stalled coming off a freeway exit ramp one winter night in freezing rain.
There was a 1993 Mercury Sable station wagon on which virtually everything went wrong, and a Buick Century that had an electrical system so screwed up no one could fix it.
Oh, we had a decent Oldsmobile and a Ford Escort, but the only totally reliable cars I had in those years were several Honda Accords and a Volvo. If you want to know why the U.S. auto industry almost died ten years ago, if you want to know why most cars sold in this country now are not made by General Motors, Ford or Chrysler … I just told you.
Today’s vehicles, both Detroit three nameplates and most of the others, are far superior to the cars of past decades. Change the oil, get your maintenance checks, follow directions, and your chances of getting what we would call a “real lemon” are vastly smaller than back then.
That’s based on my own experience and the anecdotal accounts of my friends and acquaintances. I am telling you this from Detroit’s Cobo Center, where hundreds of gorgeous vehicles are on display just a few yards from where I am talking.
Gorgeous, and reliable. They are created to do a job, and they do it well. Which is more than I can say for the President of the United States, and many state officials.
As I speak, the federal government has been largely shut down for more than a month, because President Donald Trump refuses to end the shutdown until Democrats agree to give him the $5 billion-plus he wants to start building his wall.
Democrats say they are willing to negotiate, but not at the point of a gun. Meanwhile, the negative ripple effects from 800,000 people missing a month’s worth of paychecks are metastasizing, and the damage is deepening.
The state of Michigan, which now has government slightly better than the nation’s, is doing what it can to reassure people who live in our state, telling them that anyone who lives in our state can still apply for and receive Medicaid and food assistance whatever other emergency public assistance programs they qualify for, at least for February.
After that, there are no guarantees. A new poll shows that a large majority blame Trump for the shutdown. But a narrow majority says that if necessary Democrats should agree to give him the money for his wall, just to get government functioning again.
I’m sympathetic. But giving in to blackmail from a bully would be about the worst possible signal anyone could send. Meanwhile, our nation is falling apart, our government isn’t doing its job, and more and more people are getting more and more desperate.
This is what’s happening in the country that invented modern democracy, put the world on wheels, defeated the Nazis, went to the moon and conquered polio.
We were a great if often flawed nation. We can be again. We refused to tolerate tyranny; on a mundane note, we refused to settle for lousy automobiles.
So we need to ask ourselves, and those we elected to lead and protect us — how long are we going to tolerate the insanity that threatens to bring us, and our very nation, down?
